hi everybody and welcome back to love English I'm Sabrah so today we're going
to focus on how to stop being shy or under-confident when speaking in English
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www.loveenglish.co.uk So guys I really
do understand the problem of feeling shy when you want to speak in English
and feeling under confident and I think it is a very very common problem
so i understand this from a student's perspective and also from a personal perspective
So I have taught a lot of Asian students over my teaching career and what I have noticed is that
asian students get very worried about getting the answer
wrong or not sounding right and so they worry that they're going to feel silly
and ashamed in front of others and this really holds them back and stops them
from speaking in class and I really think it affects their general progress
not just Asian students also students from other countries as well so I do
understand from a cultural perspective why you would feel shy also I
understand this from a personal perspective because although I'm a
confident person now I actually wasn't in the past at all even though I did
drama I loved drama very much but I used to
feel very very nervous getting up in front of people and speaking and in fact
it really stopped me from moving forward in that career because I felt so under
confident and it's a horrible thing to feel that it's yourself holding yourself
back it's really really not a nice thing but what I have to share with you today
though guys are tips and strategies that I've learned over time and I would say
now that I've really overcome a lot of my problems with public speaking because
I've used these tips so I'm going to share these tips with you guys today and
I really hope they're going to help you be less shy when you speak in English so
my first tip guys is visualization now visualization is such a powerful tool
this is basically when you imagine what you would like to happen not what
normally happens or not what you think would happen what you would like to happen
now this is a technique that is used by athletes by public speakers by teachers
by actors by people before they have an interview instead of getting very tense
and very nervous and very worried and imagining things going wrong they do the
opposite in their minds they imagine things going right so they imagine
scoring that goal or delivering their lines perfectly or saying the right
thing in the interview very very powerful tool visualization and you guys
can use this with your English if you imagine speaking the way you
would LIKE to speak in class or in a meeting or in any situation that scares
you instead of imagining things that could go wrong or imagining yourself
tense and hiding in the corner stop that actually reverse that thought and turn
it into something positive so see yourself in your mind putting your hand
up and speaking or in the meeting raising a point and speaking in that
meeting that's always scared you now honestly this is really gonna help you
guys to transform your mindset because basically you can reprogram your
subconscious mind by doing this regularly you can actually start to
break those negative patterns that we have of I can't do it I'm gonna make a
mistake my english isn't good enough the more you tell yourself that the more
likelihood there is that you will make a mistake or you will sound silly if you
try to do this you're actually much more likely when it comes to it to do
something right I have a lovely quote for you guys from Einstein on the power
of our imaginations so Einstein said imagination is more important than
knowledge for knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire
world and stimulates progress okay moving on to tip number two and this is
to see the situation for what it really is sometimes when we're afraid of
something we can start to really build it up in our minds and make it much
bigger than it really is and actually often when we face the fear we realize
it's much smaller than we originally thought it was
so actually seeing the situation for what it really is now one thing that I
really want to point out here is that actually people are not that interested
in you and I don't mean that in a horrible way I mean it in the sense that
people are often much more concerned and worried about themselves to be listening
to your mistakes or to be noticing when you make a mistake or when you seem a
little nervous the things that seem very big to us and seem very noticeable to us
may not actually be that noticeable to other people because they're too worried
about their own mistakes and they're too worried about seeming nervous themselves
so a really good thing for you to think about and to help you get things into
perspective is to think people are not that interested in me so if I make a little
mistake they're not going to be that concerned or they might not even
notice they're going to be more interested in themselves also obsessing
about your mistakes in English is a really really bad thing Leila and I both
talked about not doing that in our videos on confidence building which you
can see up there so you can watch those at the end of this one tip number three
is to speak clearly and start small so the reason why I'm saying this guys is
that I've noticed that a lot of more shy students because they're shy they don't
want to speak particularly loudly or clearly so they'll say well I think it
might be number two or I think a synonym of happy is enjoy and they'll speak very
quietly and not that clearly now this is actually the worst thing you can do
because you're going to actually get more attention because you weren't that
clear so your boss or your colleague or whoever it is will probably ask you to
repeat and then you're going to feel that there is more attention on you
which could make you feel even more uncomfortable so if you speak clearly
usually people are not going to ask you lots of questions after that they'll
probably just leave you alone because you've said your point very clearly so
it's a good tip guys when you speak make sure you speak clearly and also you're
gonna feel a lot better , it really doesn't make you feel any better to
speak quietly and kind of mumble a little bit that isn't gonna make you
feel good about yourself, you're not going to start to feel like a more
confident English speaker the other thing you can do
if you're shy is to start by just saying little things so if you start to just
say little things and speak a bit in class or speak a bit in the meeting this
is going to help you build your confidence the more you don't do
something the scarier it becomes and the more of a big thing it becomes it's much
better to just start small and also this way you're going to get used to it and
build your confidence up about speaking in English in front of people I've also
made a video guys on how to have a conversation with anyone in English you
can see that up here where there's some really good tips about how to actually
make something into a conversation and I think particularly that's useful for shy
people who may not know how to do that tip number four is to ask questions if
you are asking the questions then you are actually in some way controlling the
conversation you can actually prepare before the questions that you would like
to ask so for example you can think okay I'm going to ask them about their week
and and what's on the agenda today and you can prepare these questions and then
you're going to feel more confident when you're speaking because you're going to
know what the conversation is going to be about also you can practice those
questions you can record yourself practicing those questions and you can
listen back and see if you're happy with your English and things like that it's
easy to start worrying that you won't know the answer or the right word if the
other person is controlling the conversation so be that person who
starts asking the questions and that way you can shape the conversation then you
can also prepare for that before. My final tip guys is to use humour humour is
a wonderful thing that really makes people relax and it can help you relax
and it takes the stress out of the situation I often used to tell my
students if they could learn a funny joke or learn a funny story
this would help them break the ice in any situation where they might feel a
bit nervous or they might feel like they didn't know what to say if they can
prepare some sort of funny story about customs in their country for example or
tell a joke from their country or tell an English joke this can help you feel
more relaxed and also it can help the other people feel more relaxed so the
whole situation has less tension however guys obviously use
this in situations where it's appropriate if your boss doesn't
particularly appreciate humour when they're in a rush or something like that
I don't suggest it then but in appropriate situations this can really
work also in your mind you can actually help yourself relax about this by
imagining funny things again this is about imagination when I was acting and
going to auditions quite often my acting teacher would tell me if you're nervous
just imagine the people that are going to be judging you are all naked and
you're the only one clothed and they are the ones in a way that are looking silly
and you're not sometimes I didn't do this as I was worried I would be too
distracted but the idea of it used to really make me laugh
also remember guys if you're feeling shy deep breath and smile that is always
going to make you feel better I really hope this video has helped you guys and
if there's one tip that you take away from this it is to use visualization
it's such a powerful tool let me know your feedback guys on how that goes
and also share any tips below about how you overcome shyness is there something
funny that you think about to help you stop feeling shy thank you very much for
watching guys and we'll see you very soon on love English bye bye